The Saudi Arabian government, following persistent demands from the United States, has decided to disband the religious establishments maintained at Saudi embassies.
The decision will apply to all countries, including Pakistan, where such a presence is believed to exist as part of the Saudi diplomatic mission.
A beginning has been made right here with the refusal by the American authorities to renew the diplomatic visa of Saudi embassy official Jaafar Idris who worked with the Saudi-funded Institute for Islamic and Arabic Sciences in America. Idris is a Sudanese national but was sponsored as a diplomat by the Saudi government to work in America with Saudi-funded and operated educational and religious organisations. He had an office in the Islamic affairs section of the embassy.
The Washington Post Sunday quotes an unnamed “senior Saudi official” as saying that in future, only staff with legitimate diplomatic business at Saudi embassies around the world will be given diplomatic visas, part of a larger effort to get Saudi embassies out of the business of promoting religion. “We are going to shut down the Islamic affairs section in every embassy. That’s the objective,” the official said. Of the Fairfax-based institution with which Jaffar Idris was affiliated and which is a satellite campus of a leading university in Riyadh, the official said, “We’re going to sever its ties with the embassy … They will no longer be sponsored by the embassy.”
According to the Post report, “The Saudi action is part of that government’s increased vengeance towards expressions of religious extremism after the deadly May terrorist attack in Riyadh that shocked the oil-rich nation and its ruling family. The government has dismissed hundreds of imams from Saudi mosques for allegedly using extremist rhetoric, and has moved to delete language denigrating non-Muslims from school tests and curriculum.” The US authorities are also said to be investigating whether hundreds of millions of dollars spent by the Saudi embassy in Washington each year have aided extremists in this country.
According to Ms Rita Katz, director of SITE, a think tank specialising in anti-terrorism studies, “It would be the first visible sign of an effort to tone down decades of extremist Wahabi propaganda.”
In a message posted on a website, Jaadar Idris said that was questioned repeatedly by FBI agents about his lectures and travels to Europe and he was then asked to leave the United States. He is currently in the Sudan.